All Australian political parties had removed White Australia from their platforms by 1966. By the mid-1970s all were committed to some form of multiculturalism as public policy. The National (formerly Country) Party was the least enthusiastic and the Australian Labor Party the most. The Whitlam Labor government, which officially declared Australia to be ‘multicultural’, was succeeded by the Fraser Coalition which laid the institutional foundations for a multicultural public policy. None of this was seriously questioned. While there was some concern at the arrival of large numbers of Vietnamese and Lebanese in the mid-1970s, there was remarkably little disorder or disharmony. Official pronouncements from the Immigration Department stressed the need for ‘cohesiveness’ but also repeated that there would be no return to a discriminatory policy.

The ending of White Australia seemed to have passed without any of the backlash which many had threatened if the policy were abandoned. However, opinion polling turned against majority support for immigration and was never subsequently reversed. This opinion shift might have been explained by the disappearance of full employment. Studies in Australia and elsewhere have linked increases in unemployment with increases in ethnic tension and opposition to immigration. Displaced resentment is a very common phenomenon. People cannot explain the unseen economic and social forces which are changing their lives, often for the worse. They tend to blame observable agents, especially ethnic or religious minorities. Globalisation and economic rationalism disturbed many lives, but could be neither understood nor challenged.